1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a radar apparatus using an active-type antenna device which is mounted on a mobile object such as an airplane and is formed by using an airplane shape to a maximum extent, and relates to a method for forming a reception beam of the radar apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, in an antenna device of a radar mounted on an airplane, with the enhancement of requirements for higher performance of the radar, requirements for active phased arraying having high function and high performance have become increased. However, in comparison with a conventional passive antenna, the active phased arraying of the antenna device necessitates an increase in device size such as dimensions and mass as a circuit configuration has become complicated.
Meanwhile, to enhance the performance of the radar, it is needed to enlarge an antenna aperture area. However, there is a limit for use in airplane to enlarge an aperture of a relatively large-sized active phased array antenna.
In such a situation, for improving the performance of the radar apparatus for mounting until now, for example, a method for adopting a passive-type antenna of a large aperture and a method for protruding a radome toward the lower part of an airplane body to accommodate the antenna in the radome have been introduced.
However, since the passive-type antenna of the large aperture may not perform high-rate beam scanning, the performance in a scanning rate has no advantage over the active-type antenna. Meanwhile, the method for protruding the radome toward the lower part of the airplane body to accommodate the antenna in the radome poses a limit for enlarging the aperture of the antenna due to restriction on mounting, and it is necessary to repair the airplane body on a large scale, so that the problem of expenses is produced.
In the active-type antenna, as regards the radar apparatus using an adaptive array antenna is concretely disclosed, for example, in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2007-003325.
As mentioned above, in the conventional radar apparatus, in a case in which there is a limitation in an installation place because the radar apparatus is mounted on a mobile object, since it is hard to enhance the performance and enlarge the aperture of the antenna device, it is also hard to actualize the improvement of the performance of the radar.